Class, Snobbery, and Gentility

From Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
The novel's central critique: that the apparatus of gentlemanly status is funded by criminal money and built on contempt for the laboring poor who actually love Pip.
Chapter 8

Estella's contempt for Pip's coarse hands and thick boots inaugurates his class shame.

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Chapter 27

Pip's shame at Joe's London visit — the moral nadir of his snobbery.

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Chapter 39

Magwitch's exultation that his criminal wealth has bought a gentleman exposes the fiction of inherited status.

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